Pope Francis strode onto the balcony overlooking St Peter’s square wearing his finest magical-celibate robes to exhort the faithful. “BREED FOR THE BREED GOD! SOULS FOR THE SOUL THRONE!”
“God needs babies!” cried the Holy Father, who would get in serious trouble if he was ever actually a father. “It’s selfish not to have children! We didn’t quite exterminate all competing religions in the military phase of this Religion Time Strategy game, so now we need more workers in the economy phase. I mean, don’t get us wrong, we tried. We wiped out thousands of innocent paganisms and crusaded hard to slaughter the rest, but now it’s all about the numbers.”
“We need you to increase production” Francis continued, raising arms draped in brocaded robe to make a vigorous finger-through-ok gesture. “Wink wink” he added, out loud.
The International Hypocrisy Court remains unable to prosecute the Pope for these statements, as paintings of paintings of St Francis in the incalculable wealth-vault of the Vatican continue to overload their hypocrisy detectors.
“We haven’t exactly been subtle about this!” continued Francis. “Sexual health education, bodily autonomy, women’s rights, we’ve opposed anything and everything which might even slightly reduce the number of even accidental births, no matter the cost. But it’s not enough! Other religions still exist! Forget increasing our spiritual market share and ludicrous income, if people realize how there seem to be several dozen simultaneous one true gods, they might reach some absolutely basic but extremely inconvenient conclusions.”
He raised his arms to the sky.
“The Breed God cares not from whom the seed flows, only that it flows! Lay down more overcrowded faithful at His feet! Ask us how we’re sure He’s a He to see how modern our attitudes are! Souls for the soul throne! Because anyone who could look at the modern world and think ‘This needs a lot more people’ definitely isn’t going with ancient instructions instead of evidence.”
“Previous gods of suffering and bloodshed favored war. That’s amateur hour. Our god understands that the best way to maximize suffering and hardship is to pump out as many people as possible. Overload the resources! Collapse the system! The more people left desperate for succor, the better for us! We’ll get people back into church even if it’s the only standing room left for people who trying to avoid the Soylent trucks!”
Pope Francis then answered some questions from the crowd.
“No, I don’t think it’s hypocritical to guilt-trip people into having more children while talking about how Christian it is to protect the environment.”
“Yes, I still think you should hit kids. Jesus, stop going on about that. Have ’em, hit ’em, do what you like, just keep us on top of the census figures.”
“Of course people should take child-rearing advice from an organization which has to explain it’s not a euphemism when they say they’re in favor of having kids.”
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